Feel free to move on to another topic, as this idea crossed my mind just now.

CD's are being sold since 1982, so I'd like to take this as the 'starting point' of the (Audio) Compact Disc.Now, that's actually thirty years ago. Most of us probably didn't notice this. Anyway, since audio CD's are actually pretty old, and there is alternative recording technology around by now, are CD's actually retro yet?

You know, I was thinking about setting up a retro sound system, and my first though was acquiring a record turntable / radio combo from the 70's. I was talking this over with a friend who has a Grundig turntable / radio combo, where the turntable was actually manufactured by Dual. It is made in 1972 or so. Now we were talking about my idea, and we agreed I should add a tape deck, since reel to reel would be probably too expensive. Now, the next idea was a full size MiniDisc player, and - well a Compact Disc player, since they are actually older than MiniDisc.

Even though CD's kinda "feel" modern, they're actually pretty old-school by now. Using CD's in those stand-alone players from the early 1990's is almost as retro as using audio tapes or Vinyl records, I think.

I'd like to have your thoughts on this...

EDIT:

The CD player in my car can read audio CD's and CDROM's, but it seems to be very picky about the CDROM's. I usually end up burning audio CD's for my car. This was actually what brought all that up, since my friend mentioned to me, that he still uses tapes in his car.

Yes, a few. But the text was all in capitals, so on a PC you might as well grab it from freedb or whatever for consistency with every other disc you use.

There's a version of CD-Text that copes with lower case letters, and I've burnt CDs with this myself, but never seen a commercially released CD with this.

CDs are retro because mainstream chart "single" releases can often been found for download only these days - i.e. no CD version available.

Not only retro, but a high watermark in terms of quality - given that most downloads are still lossy, and the "higher quality" SACD and DVD-A were never mainstream.

Another indicator: some have already gone through the "junk" status, and are beginning to rise in price.

I reckon near-mint CD prices will continue to rise over the years - because they'll be enough OCD collectors out there who want the "original", don't trust someone else to rip it, and want one in great condition. You may think this is ridiculous, given that you can make a perfect lossless copy at no cost - but remember: there was a time when CDs came in that people thought keeping vinyl records was ridiculous, and sending complete collections to the dump - yet mint first pressing of any half-decent vinyl album remain highly collectable - some are ridiculously valuable.

there was a time when CDs came in that people thought keeping vinyl records was ridiculous, and sending complete collections to the dump - yet mint first pressing of any half-decent vinyl album remain highly collectable - some are ridiculously valuable.

I believe the collectability value in Vinyls comes with the fact, that the more you play them, the more they will degrade. So an often played vinyl is arguably less in value that a seldom played one.

Now, since CDs are a digital medium, the original cannot be distinguished from the copy (if done correctly), since a 1 is a 1 and a 0, a 0. So no matter how often you play a CD, it will always be the same quality. Two vinyls aren't even exactly the same, even when pressed on the same machine from the same master.

And yes, burned CDs will degrade, but that's different. Original, pressed CDs should last for ages.

I've always been a fan of magnetic tape for backup storage and archiving computer data, but never actually for Hi-Fi music. Yeah, Reel-to-Reel looks cool and all, but it just never had me that interested, compared to other means of storing data. OK, the only tape based system, that I'd like to play around with, is DAT. It's the only tape system that makes sense, imo.

So there we are, I've grown up with CDs and it seems, lived to a time, where this medium dies out. Something that was though of as lasting forever.

I guess I'll get myself a nice old CD player and start setting up the retro stereo!